The instant invention is the subject of Disclosure Document No. 320258, filed Nov. 9, 1992. It is in the field of miter boxes and other angle-establishing devices enabling quick and simple saw cuts to be made at pre-determined angles with repeatable accuracy.
Many devices of this nature have been devised and patented over the years, as would be expected. These devices tend to be rather complicated by nature. Once having conceived a basic, simple idea, often the inventor or developer would expand upon the idea to accommodate many different functions or adjustments of the unit until the unit would become impractical either to use or to build.
Also, because of the infinite variety and the dimensioning and type of wood and other materials upon which a miter device may be used, an effort to accommodate all, or many, different types of wood or other materials results in a unit that is possible to use in many different ways but is not perfect for any single application.
For example, any miter device designed to use when cutting both plywood and two-by-fours would likely be awkward in either mode. Whereas, no doubt there are innumerable specialized angle-establishing devices for cutting materials, there is a need for a very simple miter guide which can be used on construction sites and which is particularly adapted to both the nature of construction work and the materials most often cut on construction sites. Specifically, because construction workers are continuously moving around in the building under construction, they carry power hand saws, particularly circular saws, as they move rather than bringing the wood to a central sawing area due to the mobile nature of their work and the fact that the wood that they cut is often in the form of long construction boards such as two-by-fours and two-by-sixes too long and awkward to be conveniently carried to a remote part of the building.
Many very fine angle-establishing aids are mountable on a stationary saw and not suitable for construction site use. Any miter guide used by construction workers must be lightweight, easy to use, and compact, as well as rugged and foolproof in operation.